Seven Free Teacher Tools

Just a quick post today. I got the following on Twitter today (via twitter.com/cathriving) and thought it was worth sharing.

#1 Top 15 service learning tools and resources are here:
http://www.educationreporting.com/#service

#2 Service, stewardship, and strategies updated weekly with hundreds of resources for classes or groups are here:
http://www.educationreporting.com/greenschool.xml

#3 Encourage student participation use Project Based Learning; there's the best over 25 top web resources here: http://www.educationreporting.com/#project

#4 Technology resources, over 100 top notch ideas and tools to fortify lessons and activities: http://www.educationreporting.com/#technology

#5 Use the finest: get peer and expert wisdom by choosing from over 100 blogs and wikis at http://www.educationreporting.com

#6 Rock your instruction and save time; use these highly rated curriculum resources for all content areas at http://www.educationreporting.com/curriculum.php

#7 Nail pedagogy and hone teacher skills; quality collection of excellent resources to use as a refresher or help design innovative lessons. http://www.educationreporting.com/globaled.php#ped

Tearing Down the Walls

I've been working this week with some secondary instructional coaches and teachers on learning to integrate technology into their coaching and instruction. We've been discussing using technology for research, creating content and presentations, problem solving, creating and completing assignments, and for communicating and collaboration.
In these conversations I have heard something that I hear all the time. There are so many educators that think that technology is great for research, creating and completing lessons, presenting materials, and reinforcing instruction, but when it comes to collaboration there is a wall thrown in the path. The objection is that texting, blogging, emailing, social networks, and other such types of tools aren't really collaboration because the participants aren't interacting face-to-face, hearing each others' voices, and reading each others' body language. And I hate to sound like I am biased, but it is usually the "veteran" teachers making these objections.
It is at this point I start my retort, and it usually goes something like this: "While it might be true that kids aren't interacting face-to-face, that doesn't mean they aren't collaborating. Texting, emailing, tweeting, and using Facebook is just a small part of what collaboration has become in today's society. Sure, we still want our children to be able to communicate with people face-to-face and be able to pick up on those little nuances of inter-personal communication, but we have to move beyond that. I personally send 800 - 1,000 text messages a month, use social networking tools daily, and send more email messages than I care to even know as a way to collaborate and communicate with others professionally. The nice part about these types of communication tools is that it allows us to get down to business when I finally do meet face-to-face with my fellow collaborators. We have already done the document exchanges, we've already taken care of the agenda and assigned roles, so when we actually meet we're getting so much more done. The world outside school is going to move forward with these types of tools, so we can either follow suit or be left in the dust - as we so often are in education."
Today when I gave this speech I had the most wonderful response. One coach spoke up to the group and said (paraphrasing here) "Guys, this is where our kids are. These are the things our kids are doing and the tools they're using. Nothing we do can change that, so we've got to meet them where they are and move forward. It doesn't matter how long we debate the use of these technologies in education, the rest of the world is using them and we've got to keep up so that we remain relevant in the eyes of our students."
I seriously wanted to shout "Amen!" when she said this. It is all about being relevant. If our students don't think that our teaching is relevant, they aren't going to learn. If they have to continue to "unplug" when they walk into classrooms, they will soon "tune out" altogether and that will be the real tragedy. Educators as a whole have got to "get with it" and keep up with the times, or in the end it's going to be our children that lose in the battle of life - not us.